Question about non-redistributable files

[Tripredacus]

Greetings, this is my first post. I have not been able to get an answer to this question (and to another I will make in a moment) on other forums so I figured I would try it out here.

This regards this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;249843

Specifically mso.dll and mso9.dll. It specifically states

However, these files are not redistributable and must not be deployed to a system that already has Microsoft Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003 installed.

And then later it says:

These files must be excluded from your setup package. The client system is supposed to already have the correct files when Office is installed.

Is this to say that these files should not be redistributed in any case, or just not onto machines that have Office installed?

[cluberti]

Is this to say that these files should not be redistributed in any case, or just not onto machines that have Office installed?

These files are not redistributable, period, and thus you should exclude them from your package even if VS includes them. As to the reason you need to exclude specific files when installed on a machine with Office, you should specifically exclude these files on a machine with Office because Office already contains versions of these files when it is installed. I know it's a bit confusing, and they probably should've just said don't include these files in your packages .